Henrick Ibsen: a Doll's House

“A Doll’s House” by Henrik IbsenWhat is the role of women in society? This has been perhaps one of the most debated questions throughout history. Because women were traditionally seen as the weaker sex or second-class citizens with a lower social status than men, their place was often considered to be in the home caring for their children and spouse. During the Victorian era, marriage was possibly one of the most significant points in a woman’s life. Many women did not have the option not to marry because marriage was simply a necessity for survival. Society prevented women from making their own living, which cause an inescapable dependence upon men’s income. During this time it was not uncommon for women to view themselves as worthless and their situation hopeless, which left many women to accept deplorable, degrading, and disrespectful treatment in their family lives. Many characters in great literary works were created simply to give readers some insight to the struggles that many women many to endure, but yet overcome. By looking at the character Nora in Henrik Ibsen’s play “A Doll’s House”, one will see how the society’s negative view of women might have influenced Ibsen to write a play about a female heroine during a time when it would not be viewed favorably and why many generations of readers of the play choose to view it as work of feminism.

In “A Doll’s House”, the obvious themes are love, family, gender roles, lies, marriage, masculinity, money, and respect. It is very evident that the character Nora Helmer is the link connecting each of these themes. Nora is not only a woman who clearly loves and respects her husband Torvald, but she also believes that he loves her despite the way she treated. At one point in the play Nora tells Christine, "you know how devotedly, how inexpressibly deeply Torvald loves me; he would never for a moment hesitate to give his life for me" (Booth, Mays 1468). Nora’s every thought seemed to be to please her Torvald,...

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...A Doll’sHouse by Henrik Ibsen is a play that challenges women’s rights as a matter of importance during a time period where it was ignored. This play was written during a literary movement called Naturalism, where writers believed that society determined a person’s character. Ibsen portrays the role of a woman in the 19th century lifestyle through the main character, Nora Helmer, who stays at home, raises the children, and attends to her husband’s every need. In A Doll’sHouse, Nora struggles for an authentic identity in the midst of a time where society oppressed women and their rights with what people believed was a social-norm. Throughout the play, Nora displays an inauthentic identity to the audience and ultimately tries to uncover her authentic identity all throughout the play.
The submissiveness Nora shows is an important trait to her character. It shows how oppressed she is because of how society thinks that women are inferior to men. This type of oppression is evident by the way her husband, Torvald Helmer, manipulates her in all aspects of her life. Torvald is very authoritative and tells Nora to act a certain way and even to dress a certain way. He is the type of man who is so focused on social and physical appearance that he cares more about his reputation than his wife that he claims to love. Although Nora and Torvald’s relationship seem to be perfect on the outside, it is...

...A Doll'sHouse, a play by Henrik Ibsen, tells the story of Nora, the wife of Torvald Helmer, who is an adult living as a child, kept as a doll by her husband. She is expected to be content and happy living in the world Torvald has created for her. By studying the play and comparing and contrasting the versions presented in the video and the live performance, one can analyze the different aspects of it.
Ibsen's purpose for writing this piece is to entertain while pointing out an injustice. Through the events of the play, Nora becomes increasingly aware of the confines in which Torvald has placed her. He has made her a doll in her own house, one that is expected to keep happy and busy as a songbird, who acts and does as he deems proper. As a result of this, she is often pointed out to be very simple by the other characters. Her friend Christina calls her "a mere child," showing how naïve she appears to be to the hardships in life. To prove to her friend that she really has achieved something on her own to be proud of, Nora tells Christina of her secret borrowing of money for the trip to Italy that saved Torvald's life. Everyone believed that Nora had gotten the money from her father, while actually she found someone to borrow the money from and had been paying her debt back. She did so by spending frugally and always saving some of the money Torvald had given her and by doing odd jobs. She explained to...

...Animal imagery is prevalent in a variety of literary selections. This paper will focus on animal imagery in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll'sHouse by using the reader response strategy.
In the play A Doll'sHouse by Henrik Ibsen, animal imagery is used in the development of the main character Nora. It is also later found that the animal imagery is a critical part in understanding who Nora is and how other characters perceive her. Ibsen uses creative animal imagery to develop Nora's character throughout the play. The animal imagery is carried out through the conversation between Nora and her husband Torvald. Torvald uses a lot of bird imagery because he thinks of Nora as lark. It is also evident that the animal names he calls Nora, directly relate to how Nora is acting or how Torvald wants her to be portrayed.
In Act 1, Torvald asks, "Is it my little lark twittering out there?" referring to Nora (3). A lark is a happy and carefree songbird. In the beginning of the play it is evident that Nora is or appears to be a lively-spirited and carefree woman, just like a lark. She has already made the loan with Krogstad. Torvald refers to Nora early in the play as "my little lark" when she is moving around the room and humming with a carefree spirit that characterizes the lark (3). It seems that whenever Nora is happy, Torvald thinks of her as a bird, specifically a lark. In contrast to Torvald's calling...

...A Doll House, by Henrik Ibsen, the convention of marriage is examined and questioned for its lack of honesty. The play is set in the late 1800s, which provides the backdrop for the debate about roles of people in society. Ibsen uses the minor character, Dr. Rank, to help develop the theme of conflicts within society. This, in turn, creates connections with the plot. Dr. Rank's function in the play is to foreshadow, symbolize, and reflect upon the truth of life and society and to break down the barrier between appearance and reality.
One function of Dr. Rank in the play is to foreshadow events to come. Upon Rank's introduction in Act I, the reader is immediately given insight into the conflict Nora will face with Krogstad. Rank provides the reader with minute details into Krogstad's past that will help in understanding his desperate blackmail attempt. The reader can begin to see this in Rank's statement to Nora and Mrs. Linde: "Oh, it's a lawyer, Krogstad, a type you wouldn't know. His character is rotten to the root--but even he began chattering all-importantly about how he had to live" (1574). Rank also foreshadows the change of society that is a constant throughout the play. One can begin to see this foreshadowing in the statement Rank makes about the morally sick being forgiven, "That's the concept that's turning society into a sanatorium" (1574). Through these insights, Dr. Rank provides the reader with an ability to form...

...A Doll'sHouse, by Henrik Ibsen, is a well written play portraying
women's struggle for independence and security in the nineteenth
century. The drama revolves around Nora, a traditional housewife, who
struggles to find a way to save her husband's life while battling
society's norms. Her decision to forge a check to help her husband,
Torvald, went against the patriarchical laws of that time: her plan
was to borrow money and save her ill husband's life. Krogstad, the
antagonist, discovers her deceit and threatens to expose her lies. As
a result, the protagonist is torn between telling the truth to her
husband or attempting to cover it up to save her marriage. In the
following analysis, I'll discuss Torvald and Nora's relationship and
Torvald's general view of women. In addition, I will evaluate his
attraction to Nora, focusing on his attitude on treating like a doll,
or a child. Lastly, I'll discuss how and why Torvald spoils Nora by
giving her what she wants.
Torvald and Nora's relationship appears to be more of a
father-daughter relationship rather than a traditional husband-wife
relationship. He spoils her, and further, finds reason to rain
affection on her: "He goes up to her and takes her playfully by the
ear." Torvald views the effeminate, dainty Nora as a child, and
refuses to take her seriously. His view was very much like male
dominant view of women in that era: women were innocent, naiive,
little...

...The words of Ibsen said, “There are two kinds of moral laws, two kinds of conscience, one for men and one, quite different, for women. They don’t understand each other; but in practical life, woman is judged by masculine law, as though she weren’t a woman but a man…. A woman cannot be herself in modern society.” Throughout the plot there were numerous themes that Ibsen created from those ideas such as deception, blackmail, inequality, marriage, freedom, honesty, and much more. The themes that will be discussed are the sacrificial role of woman, gender, and freedom.
In “A Doll’sHouse” by Ibsen there were quite a few examples of sacrificial roles held by women. One was when Mrs. Linda had to abandon Krogstad, who was her one and only true love for a richer man. In order to support her mother and two brothers, Mrs. Linda found it necessary to sacrifice her happiness for the sake of helping out her family. Another example of a sacrificial role held by women was when the Nanny had to leave her child to support herself, which is when she started working as Nora’s and now Nora’s children’s caretaker. During the play Nora made a couple of sacrifices such as leaving her children, despite the love she had for them she chose to leave them with the Nanny thinking she would be a better mother and have their best interest at heart. Nora did not want to leave her children; she only wanted to make a way for...

...Dana Schrenker
O’Connor
April 20, 2010
A Doll’sHouse
A Doll’sHouse by Henrik Ibsen, is a play about a woman who realizes that she is worth more than she has been given credit. Her whole life she was treated like a little doll; too fragile to do anything serious, too frail to be troubled with real business. She was the wife, mother and homemaker. The only things she was perceived as capable of were running the home, raising the children and looking pretty. This was a common stereotype for women in the 1880’s. Women were treated as possessions, not people. Women had a specific role they had to fill. They had to look just so, act just so, raise the children in a certain way, and keep up the house in a perfect way. Many women tried to fill this position of the “perfect housewife”. They wore corsets that put about 22 pounds of pressure on their internal organs, which caused cracked ribs, displacement of the liver and uterine prolapsed and collapsed lungs, all just to look the way men wanted them to. Women balanced their ever so busy family lives as well as their social lives. They stayed home to take care of the house and the children. Nora does not follow these social rules that was unheard of during this time period.
Marriage is a forever commitment between two individuals to love one another but marriages don't always have the fairytale...

...﻿A DOLL’SHOUSE
Hendrik Ibsen’s A Doll’sHouse (1879) shocked audiences of the 19th century by undermining and challenging the dominant bourgeois and patriarchal ideologies that were the social norms of the time. He used characteristics of the well-made play and realist theatre to produce a play that questioned the morals and social spheres of the time when it was written. Realist theatre became popular in the late 19th century and was a response to the growth of the bourgeoisie as the ideological centre. The realist theatre at the time represented everyday bourgeois life and exposed the contradictions, fault lines and fissures in this ideology. This style of theatre reflected the everyday life of the bourgeoisie but challenged and undermined their values and morals. Literary texts often reflect the cultural values and attitudes important at the time they were written but Ibsen’s A Doll’sHouse doesn’t. Instead it challenges the conventional morality of the bourgeois audience and is critical of the middle class values embodied in the ‘real’ world on stage. Hendrik Ibsen’s A Doll’sHouse challenges the cultural values and attitudes of the time it was written rather than reflecting them. A Doll’sHouse exposes, criticizes and contradicts the cultural values and attitudes of 19th century Europe, such as the separation of spheres, the...